“I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding, and even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six year old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes, the devil’s eyes.” – Dr. Loomis

On a cold Halloween night in 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers brutally murdered his 17-year-old sister Judith. He was sentenced and locked away for 15 years. But on Oct. 30, 1978, while being transferred for a court date, a 21-year-old Michael Myers steals a car and escapes to his quiet hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, where he looks for his next victims.

John Carpenter’s original classic Halloween gave audiences something to be very scared of: the boogeyman. Michael Myers is an unstoppable killing machine that only has one mission: to kill more. Something so simplistic may sound dull to some, but it’s the simplicity of Myers’s so called ‘motives’ that makes this slasher so terrifying. Myers doesn’t have any specific motives. He doesn’t want to take revenge on the kids of Elm Street or punish the camp counselors of Camp Crystal Lake like Freddy Krueger and Pamela Voorhees respectively. He can’t be reasoned with and can’t be stopped. Michael Myers is the embodiment of pure evil.

Upon its initial release, Halloween was welcomed to negative reviews, mainly due to the film’s now iconic score not being in the film and horror movies being looked down upon at that time. With the score in the film and audiences championing the film, Halloween was and is hailed a classic. Unlike it’s gory copycats, such as Friday the 13th, Halloween uses a small amount of blood. Most would think a slasher would need lots of gore but that’s not the case in order to be effective. One of the most terrifying things about this movie is that the less you see, the more it’s up to the audience to imagine. The film can very easily get into your head at times. Whether it’s Myers staring at Laurie through a window one second and vanishing the second after, or his missing body at the end of the film after he was shot six times and fell off of a balcony, the message that Carpenter is conveying is that the boogeyman can never truly be stopped, and that is truly terrifying.  

Terrifying serial killers aside, this is also the film that skyrocketed Jamie Lee Curtis into stardom. Although her character type is more of a cliche now, her performance as the vulnerable Laurie Strode made it very easy for audiences to root for her to kill Myers, or at least do as much damage as she could, and get out of there. Whenever the franchise becomes stale, they find a way to bring her back. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later and this year’s Halloween are the only sequels after the original two films that have been received well by fans. The common denominator, of course, being the magnificent Jamie Lee Curtis.

Unlike Curtis, Halloween did have one actor that was a household name, Donald Pleasance. At the time, Donald Pleasence was the only well known actor in the film, and his unhinged performance as the looney Dr. Sam Loomis was not only a great addition to the film, but a staple of the franchise. His drive to kill Michael is what ultimately drives a majority of the franchise. If Strode isn’t being brought back into the fray, then it’s Loomis trying his best to shoot Myers six more times or trying to beat him to death with a two-by-four. It’s simple to say that Loomis was one of the only chances of stopping Myers, or so we would hope. Joker has his Batman, Moby Dick has his Ahab, matter has its antimatter, the yang has its yin, and Michael Myers has his psychiatrist turned personal hunter Dr. Loomis.

Halloween is considered the first and the best slasher movie there is. John Carpenter’s masterful direction of knowing how to create the perfect amount of tension for a scene and Carpenter’s score for the film still sends chills down my spine every time I hear it. With great additions such as Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence leading the charge to rid the world of the ever persistent blue jumpsuit wearing, white faced, orange haired, black eyed, heavy-breathing, boogeyman Michael Myers (like that will ever happen), this slasher flick is definitely a trick and not a treat.